


Morgan Gains a Grampa

by Cleo the Muse (cleothemuse)



Series: Grampa Steve's Bedtime Stories [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, But Kind of Is Anyway, F/M, Gen, Not A Fix-It, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Time Travel, it's complicated - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-02-29 14:02:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18779734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cleothemuse/pseuds/Cleo%20the%20Muse
Summary: Morgan Stark has a bunch of aunts and uncles; then one day, she gains a grampa.





	Morgan Gains a Grampa

Morgan liked to do things a certain way. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for example, _had_ to be cut into four pieces from corner to corner, because four little triangular sandwiches were much more fun to eat than one big one and a lot less messy. Messes were to be avoided, too, except if they involved LEGO blocks or that one time she and Mommy tried to bake cookies and ended up wearing more flour than went into the dough. She also preferred it when Mommy tucked her in bed at night and handed her the picture of Daddy so she could give him a goodnight kiss. Then Mommy would read a story to her from a book before kissing her goodnight.

If Mommy was away for work, then Morgan’s Grampa Steve came over to stay with her. He’d tuck her in, let her give Mommy a kiss on video chat, then hand her the picture of Daddy for his kiss. Once Daddy’s picture was back on the bookshelf, Grampa Steve would turn off the bedside lamp so that Miss Friday could cover the ceiling with stars, and ask Morgan what story she wanted to hear.

“ _Captain Steve_ , Grampa! Tell me _Captain Steve_!”

Grampa Steve sometimes read to her from books and other times watched a movie with her, but her favorite by far was when he told her _Captain Steve’s Adventures Through the Multiverse._

The _Captain Steve Adventures_ were stories he made up just for her: they had to be, because almost all the characters in his stories were her aunts and uncles and sometimes Daddy and Mommy. Some of his stories were sad, some were happy, and others were complicated and weird and even a little silly at times. Sometimes he illustrated his stories in the air with Miss Friday’s help, lines glowing in the air where he’d drawn them using his fingers or his cane.

Sometimes, Morgan got to spend the entire day with Grampa Steve, and the two of them enjoyed going for walks together. Uncle Bucky and Uncle Sam liked to tease Grampa Steve for being a ‘slowpoke’, but Morgan liked that Grampa Steve didn’t walk fast because it was easier for her short legs to keep up. She asked him once why he didn’t walk as fast as other grown-ups did, and he said it was because he’d long ago learned the value of slowing down. Uncle Bucky said it was because Grampa Steve was older than dirt, and dirt didn’t move very fast, either.

While Morgan was pretty sure Grampa Steve wasn’t _actually_ older than dirt, she did know he was really, _really_ old. She found his wallet one time and looked at his driver’s license, then did the math in her head to find out he was over a hundred years old. Grampa Steve laughed when she told him about it and said that his actual age depended on who you asked, but either way, he promised he didn’t look a day over eighty.

Kelsey in the play-group had a great-grandma who was ninety-three, but she looked way older than Grampa Steve did and had to use a wheelchair. Grampa Steve had his cane, but he never leaned on it like eighty-two-year-old Miz Kowalski from the park did her walker. Miss Llasos, the receptionist, had a grandpa who was seventy-eight and often forgot things, but Grampa Steve could remember _everything_. Mister Shelton, the funny man who owned the bodega near Grampa Steve’s apartment, was eighty-six and his hands shook and he had trouble reading small print; Grampa Steve’s hands were steady and he could read the small numbers on his pretty wrist watch without squinting.

The _Captain Steve Adventures_ started one night when she asked him if the ring on his left hand was anything like the ring Mommy wore on the same finger on her left hand. He answered that it was: Mommy wore a ring on that finger because she had married Daddy, and Grampa Steve’s ring was because he’d married the mother of his children, too. This surprised Morgan because she thought that if Grampa Steve had kids, then shouldn’t he be tucking them into bed at night instead of her? He had laughed—it was becoming her favorite sound in the whole wide world—and said that his kids were all grown, and that some of them had had kids, and that those kids were all grown, too.

“You’re somebody’s grampa, Uncle Steve?” she had asked, because at that time she called him “uncle” like most of Daddy and Mommy’s other friends (except the ones she called “aunt” but she didn’t call him that because then-Uncle Steve wasn’t a girl).

“Several somebodies,” then-Uncle Steve answered, looking a little sad, “but they’re all too big to tuck into bed now, so that leaves just you, Little Bug.”

She thought about this and realized that maybe what he needed to cheer him up was to be a grampa again. “Do you want to be my Grampa Steve instead of my Uncle Steve?”

He smiled at that, and for a moment he looked both a lot younger and an awful lot like a man standing next to Daddy in some of the pictures she’d seen. “I’d be _honored_ to be your Grampa Steve.”

“Grampa Steve, you look a lot like the Captain in some of the pictures with Daddy. Are you the Captain’s grampa, too?”

Grampa Steve laughed—definitely one of the best sounds ever—and said that he wasn’t the Captain’s grampa, but they were related. “Would you like to hear about the time Captain Steve got rescued by a princess?”

“Captain Steve rescued a princess?”

“No, Little Bug, Captain Steve got rescued _by_ a princess.”

He then told her a funny story about Uncle Bucky, a runaway rhinoceros, a herd of angry goats, and Princess Shuri of Wakanda, who Morgan hadn’t realized until then was an _actual_ princess.

“Do you think I should call her Princess Shuri from now on? I wouldn’t want to be rude.”

Grampa Steve rolled his shoulders. “How about you ask her what she wants? I think if she didn’t ask you to call her Princess Shuri before, then she probably didn’t think it was important. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to ask.”

It soon turned out Grampa Steve was right, and Princess Shuri said that Morgan could call her ‘princess’ only if she really wanted to, but she certainly didn’t have to. Morgan decided she liked the idea of knowing a real live princess, but—as Princess Shuri suggested—she wasn’t going to call Uncle T’Challa “King T’Challa” because he didn’t look old enough to be a king.

That was the first of the _Captain Steve Adventures_ Grampa Steve told, but it was far from the last.

**Author's Note:**

> Endgame was pretty much everything I could have hoped for, but the execution of the final bits of it left some big ol' plot holes that needed filling. Morgan would very much like to hear from Grampa Steve how those plot holes were filled.
> 
> This is a planned series that is currently outlined on 15 single-spaced pages and still growing, with at least seven major installations and probably a few minor ones. No individual story will be posted that isn't already complete, though it may be published a chapter at a time to help with editing. It's not technically a fix-it because the rules of time travel established in Endgame don't allow me to "fix" some things, but TPTB also broke their own rules there at the end and that _does_ need to be fixed so my brain will stop hurting and all will be right with the multiverse again.


End file.
